I'm Coming Home
by Prayer Machine
Summary: Yuna/Tidus/Angst. She has birds in her heart.


She once had a birds in her heart.

They'd fluttered, drummed, scratched and clawed at all her insides - made her head drop low and her hair swoop with her. They'd sung and twisted up all her heartstrings, pulled them so tight that her chest felt like it was going to cave in. And when he pressed his lips to hers and her heart burst forever, she knew that there must have been an awful mess inside of her - but those birds knitted it all back together, like a nest.

Like a nest.

Ha.

She drew her fingers through her hair. The sun melted far off in the distance, and Mi'ihen highroad sprung out all around her. She'd once told a man who had never existed that this was where she would have wanted to live. A quiet place. A place where she could think, relax, and lose herself to liquid time and nothingness.

That thought terrified her now.

The birds in her chest had once scratched and shrieked and clawed and cawed. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Never once did she weep, never once did she let her smile fall away into feathery-frowns and yewling, gutter-throat cries. She had to be a big girl, and let those birds rip and shred and tear her all to pieces - because all the world was smiling, and all the world beamed and lit up and sung around her. She couldn't let them see that she was happier with thoughts of death just weeks ahead of her, then thoughts of eternal life sweeping out before her.

The water pooled beneath the sunset, glowing black and bubbling in the night.

"Pretty," she said, forcing it out of her mouth. And it was pretty. It was as pretty as it had been then - with the dew dangling and melting between the cotton-reeds and sun-bleached grasses. And she had felt then a surge of liquid life, that her flesh might be able to dance and spin and scream and shout "oh holy, holy" forever more - because who knew how wonderful the feeling of love could be when it was kindled between the warm fingers of friendship.

Where were her friends now?

Scattered, moving on, weightless and spinning - seeds in the wind. Lulu had said once, that the sun would set, and in the morning, their journey would begin anew. Those… weren't the exact words - but they were true in their sentiment. She wished she could remember them properly, now. Wished she could remember her guiding voice, her strong voice - because yes, the journey had begun anew… but watching the sun set on it was so much harder than watching it rise again.

Lulu was pregnant. Life tossed and turned in her belly, and Yuna was excited and hopeful. But… even though it was selfish, and even though it shamed her to think it - she knew that meant the end of all adventure. She knew that meant that _nothing_ would ever be like it was before.

And everyone had their new lives, and finally had the choice and the chances to shape them in exactly the way they wanted.

And all she had was a whistle and the wind.

"You know, being a sphere hunter has helped me understand Spira."

She knitted her hands behind her back, and swayed with the sun and the sunset.

"I always wondered about the ruins around Besaid. They seemed so strange to me, so different. Maybe you recognized them, maybe you found them more like home than the village itself."

She laughed a little at the thought, but it was weak.

"But looking through history, it's funny. So much… changes, but some things never do, you know?"

These little talks used to give her comfort, but as she reached to her chest, she found nothing stirring in there.

"…This is stupid, isn't it?"

All her birds had flown.

The wind slashed across her cheeks. The sunset was a murky mixture of browns and deep reds. The grass and cotton-fields were pecked full of holes by crows and crawling insects.

"It's time for me to go home."

And some things in history really never changed.

Faith. Hope. Love.

Those three things she had carried, like stones in her pocket. The first had been shattered. The second had been proved pointless. It was only now that she could toss away the third, and with a brilliant, unfaltering smile - she felt all her birds swell back into her - and off the Mi'ihen cliff she flung herself.

Salt. Fire. Water.

She let the ocean eat her whole.

And when she surfaced, all pain sizzling from her nose and across her chest and arms, she turned breathless and choking, foam and water in her mouth - and screamed a laugh towards the brilliant burning sun as it made a thin line across the swelling horizon.


End file.
